Deven Bhojani responds to Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai's 'Dushyant memes' taking over the internet during the Microsoft outage

When the Microsoft outage brought life to a standstill, actor-director Deven Bhojani became the center of attention for memers across the country. His character Dushyant from Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai—he is a technology enthusiast—and his catchphrase 'I'll explain' made it to the list of memes, and even he enjoyed them to the hilt. "Feel really good about it, as an actor and a director too because all my characters become so popular, including Dushyant," he says.

Bhojani asserts that many people still don’t know that he directed the sitcom as well, apart from featuring in it. "I want the audience to know that the show they love so much, I have not only acted in it but created it as well. It isn't the first time that I have seen Dushyant memes take over the internet." He says that after Oppenheimer came out in 2023, people made memes saying, "Only Dushyant can interpret the film Nolan conceived it to be.". "Also, 'Only Dushyant can explain Nirmala Sitharamam's budget to public' memes came in afterward," he says.

Now that the show is back in the news, does he feel a third season for Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai should be made? "After the first season, people had been asking for season 2 and I, along with producers JD Majethia and Aatish Kapadia, were contemplating whether we should go for it. So when we finally did the second season, we did it well to quite an extent, not really fully. And we felt that maybe the bar that we had put for ourselves would be really hard to reach that high again. We have mutually decided that until and unless we come up with an idea which we are 110 percent sure is going to be loved by the audience, will we go for it," he responds.

Bhojani acknowledges that sitcoms have degraded in level over the years and explains why: "Those were the times when we had episodes once or twice a week.". So, we had enough time to put in the effort as creators and give time to the actors to do workshops and rehearsals. That was a kind of luxury. But today's time has daily comedies, it's another big challenge; because there is no time to prepare—there is a deadline. "Hence, quality is also suffering," he elaborates, adding that the art of family comedies has been lost in recent times. "There are successful weekly comedies, but they deal with different kind of humour and have different set of audience. But if you see the comedies of the 90s and early 2000s, there is no comparison," he insists.

Though Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai wasn't a success during the time of its release, Bhojani reveals it wasn't them who shut the show down, but on their own accord. "Their creative team actually was happy with our show despite low TRPs, but we ourselves felt that we were starting to get repetitive and before it happened more, we should stop it.". "So it was our decision to come to the channel to take a break. The show was way ahead of its time and around the 17th run of the show, which was five years later, is when people have started to take note of it," he reveals, adding that though he loves both acting and direction, he is focused more on the former now. "Direction has taken a backseat for now, unless I get a great script," he says.